2010-02-13 36 -76

Location

Cavalier Wildlife Management Area in Chesapeake, Va

Participants

Archer27 and StrongAbby

Plans

I reviewed Google photos and it looked like the hash was in a field that might be reachable by back roads. I couldn't be sure if they were on private property or not, but it looked like it was worth a shot. I decided to check for some nearby geocaches also, just in case anything was in the area. I immediately found that there were 3 caches all within a few hundred yards of the hash, but while reading the cache descriptions, I also discovered that the whole area is an animal sanctuary. The instructions indicated that from the parking lot of the area, it was a 10 mile roundtrip hike to the cache/hash area. I am just not prepared for a 10 mile hike, and couldn't get my bike down there either. I decided to attempt entry the way I initially planned from Google maps and would see how far I could get. My daughter decided to answer the call to adventure at the last minute, provided that adventure would yield positive gummibear-related results for her. I advised her that that was very likely, so we set off.

Expedition

The hash area is in the country, just north of the North Carolina/Virginia border. It took about 40 minutes to get to the right area and then I located the promising-looking road I had spied on Google maps. The road ended still 2 miles away from the hash, but there was a dirt road that led to several farmhouses ahead, so I kept going. The dirt road ran beside a field on one side and a large drainage ditch on the other. Due to all the recent snow, the track was very muddy, and I was kind of worried about getting the hashmobile stuck. But since there was no room to turn around and go back, I was stuck with seeing where the road led - at least it was going in the direction of the hash. We finally got to a cross track and I stopped the car in the most solid-looking place I could see. As it was only a couple hundred yards down the road to the next turn, we decided to get out and walk down to see what we could see. At that point, the road turned back south, in the direction of the hash, so we kept going. Eventually we got to another turn in the track, this time to the east, away from the hash.

StrongAbby was definitely whining about the cold and her need of gummibears seemed to outweigh her need to visit a randomly-generated point (strange, right?), so I was about ready to pack it in. Had I been alone, I could have attempted to bushwhack my way through, but given the mud and the cold, it didn't take much convincing to get me back to the car.

Back in the car, I still had plans in the area. I had pulled two geocaches and I headed back north on the same road to get the first one (GC1K5J0). It was a microcache at a beautiful wooden-beam bridge in the middle of the woods. I searched for a few minutes but wasn't able to find the cache in any of the normal places, so we moved on the next one.

This one was a virtual cache at a local Civil War Monument (GCF066). It was a very nice area and a nice little side-trip.

I finally stopped at a 7-11 and got StrongAbby her gummibears and myself a Coke to give me the extra energy to make it home. We got back an hour later, after making a quick stop to run the hashmobile through a carwash. There are others who use the vehicle during the week and they frown upon gobs of hashmud all over the car.